


💗Kitten Paws and Pink Lemonade💗

by BadTasteGang



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Gen, Kepler AND Rachel lives AU, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-01
Updated: 2019-03-01
Packaged: 2019-11-07 16:17:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17963894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BadTasteGang/pseuds/BadTasteGang
Summary: A silenced gunshot, no bang, aim for the centre of mass. Aim for the gut. Warren, were you going to shoot a pregnant woman in the stomach? Remind me, I seem to have forgotten. Oh, but you didn’t know? Well that makes it all better, doesn’t it?





	💗Kitten Paws and Pink Lemonade💗

Rachel frowns at the screen in front of her. She’s trying her hardest to focus on what she’s seeing and ignore her churning stomach.  _Not now. Settle down._

“The Pulse Beacon, it’s almost at half power. At that… Would our signal have made it back to Earth?”

“No,” Kepler says. “Probably not.”

“Jesus…” She swallows bile rising in her throat.  _Not now._ “We have to tell Mr. Cutter.”

“...Do we?”

“Of course we do! Something’s… Something’s wrong with the… With the system.” She takes a deep breath.  _Not fucking now!_

“No,” Kepler drawls. “Nothing’s wrong.” His hand is on the grip of his holstered pistol. “The power is jus-”

“Shit,” Rachel gasps, “I’m sorry, Warren, I-I need to go.” Before he can react she’s turned on her heel and is dashing back down the corridor.  _Shit,_ she must have seen him reaching for his gun. Is it worth chasing her down? He considers it for a moment before he settles on an answer.  _Yes._ If it’s the last thing he does, he’s not risking humanity for Cutter’s damned plan. He draws his weapon and pursues her, following the sound of her heels clicking and a door rattling. He turns the corner in time to see her disappear into the nearest cleaning closet, slamming the door behind her and clattering around inside.

“Not the most dignified place to die, Miss Young,” he says softly. He’s reaching for the door handle when a cacophony of retching rises and makes him pause. Luckily he has a strong stomach and the sound of his superior throwing up does nothing to shake him, but it throws a bit of a spanner in his plan. He hears her snuffle, cough, retch again, and decides to knock on the door.

“Go away,” she croaks.

“I’m coming in.”

“I said go away-” She groans and is loudly sick again. The door opens with a swish and he steps in, leaning against the frame with his gun once again hidden by his jacket. Rachel glares up at him from the mop bucket she’s kneeling next to, drool and tears running down her face. “What are you staring at?” It’s at this moment Kepler decides to turn his brain on and add 2 and 2 together. Every time he’s been around Rachel for more than a few hours during this past fortnight on the Sol, at some point she’s gone green and made an excuse before running off to do god-knows-what. He didn’t think anything of it - maybe she was required somewhere else, or she remembered something she needed to check on? Hell, he’d noticed she looked nauseated a few times but chalked it up to, he doesn’t know, food poisoning. He hadn’t thought about it. Why the hell would he think about it? Is he even sure that ‘it’ really is what he thinks it is? Rachel gives him a dirty look and like that he knows, whatever passed between them in that moment of eye contact confirms that growing suspicion. Her head drops back down and she gags, spits, then seems to be done. Kepler shifts from where he was standing, feels the gun against his hip and feels his stomach drop. What was he going to do before she ran off, again? What was he 10 seconds away from doing? A silenced gunshot, no bang, aim for the centre of mass. Aim for the gut.  _Warren, were you going to shoot a pregnant woman in the stomach? Remind me, I seem to have forgotten. Oh, but you didn’t know? Well that makes it all better, doesn’t it?_ He swallows and looks down at her wiping her mouth on her sleeve.

Rachel, of course, has no idea how close she came to a grizzly death, no idea that in a different universe she’d be dead right now, slumped against the controls as Kepler goes popsicle mode in the freezing starlight. All she knows is she did so good at keeping this under wraps, avoided any suspicion for the past few months on the Hermes and Sol, and in the end it was Kepler who found out first. Warren fucking Kepler, Mr Pain-In-My-Ass who went and caught her out because her morning sickness couldn’t give her a break. She gets to her feet with the bucket in her hand and wordlessly makes her way past him so she can clean it, because of course someone just  _had_ to go and kill the Hermes crew and break everyone else out of their restraining bolts, and now she has to do every menial task herself. Kepler watches with a perplexed expression as she leaves without so much as a goodbye. Is that  _it?_ Are they not going to talk about this? It might not be his place to pry, no, but he can’t exactly let it go without some sort of closure. This isn’t exactly a small playground secret. He shuts the door and trots after her, matching her pace quickly as she walks. She pointedly doesn’t look at him and there’s a silence until he asks,

“So, who’s the fathe-”

“Warren, if you  _ever_ ask me that again I’ll throw my barf on you.”

“Right, right.” He expects them to go quiet again but she sighs and finally glances at him.

“No one else knows about this, okay? No one else needs to know about it.” She’s speaking slowly, like he’s a child who needs it spoonfed to him. “If you tell anyone about it, I. Will. Have. You. Skinned. Got it?”

“...Got it. But… Should you at least tell-”

“ _No one_ hears about this, Warren! And I definitely don’t want Mr. Cutter catching wind of it.” Kepler blinks, processes that. 

“...Wait, is Cutter th-” The swings the bucket, moving like she’s about to toss it, and takes great pleasure in how frantically he scrambles to get out of the way.

“I  _said-_ ”

“I won’t ask again!” Rachel huffs and pushes open the bathroom door.

“Good.”

On a space station the last thing you need to worry about is gender separation and the Sol’s bathrooms reflect that. Why would you bother with men’s and women’s toilets when you’re light years away from Earth and have barely 10 people on board, anyway? Kepler follows her in and while she cleans herself up he takes a moment to splash water on his face.  _Calm down, stop overthinking._ He looks at himself in the mirror.  _You didn’t pull the trigger. She’s fine. She’s fine, look._ Has he always looked so worn out?  _But you were going to. You’d never even have known if she hadn’t got sick. What were you going to tell Cutter when she didn’t come back with you?_ He shakes his hand dry and searches the reflection of his eyes, wonders where this sudden bid for morality came from.  _Oh, you weren't going back, were you? You were going to try to find the rest of the crew, help them eliminate the other threats, then pray they’ve forgiven you for your wrongdoings, weren't you? Another happy ending._ Rachel not-so-gently budges him out of the way and leans down to drink from the tap, interrupting his spiraling thoughts.  _You can’t kill her now, Warren. But you can’t let her go back to Cutter and tell him about the Pulse Beacon, either. What are you going to do? Time’s running out._ His eyes wander around the small room. What is there within reach? A bottle of lemon bleach, some paper towels, a tool kit, the rinsed out bucket. His eyes lock on the tools and he slides closer.

“Miss Young?”

“What is it, Warren?”

“Are you going to tell Cutter about the broken relay?”

“Uh, yeah?” She swills water around her mouth before spitting it into the sink. “As soon as I’ve washed up I’ll go back.”

“Right.” She rolls her eyes and stands up straight, not focusing on him slowly approaching her as she looks at her teary eyes in the small mirror “And what about you? You’re coming back with me to see what else Mr. Cutter needs, aren’t you?” He takes another step towards her. 

“I’m…” He takes one of his signature pauses, feels the weight of the wrench in his hand. “Sorry, Miss Young.”

“What are you talking abo-” The tool collides with her head as she turns, knocking her out cold for the second time in so many hours. That bruise will go nicely with the one Captain Lovelace left, if it doesn’t give her any serious brain damage first.  _Give yourself some credit, Warren. You know exactly how hard to hit someone if you want to mess them up; that was barely a scratch._ He looks down at the woman by his feet, collapsed next to the sink with her head lolling on her shoulder.

"You can thank me later.” He crouches and slides his arms under her. “That was for the kid.” This isn’t going to be an easy one to explain.  _Screw the crew’s forgiveness_. He picks Rachel up, letting her head roll onto his shoulder.  _Getting her out alive is our new priority._ Her chest slowly rises and falls and for a second he’s caught up in watching it. Her heart beats on in there, a steady rhythm that’s been drumming for the past -  _just how old is she?_ \-   30 odd years. And in her belly flutters a tiny hummingbird, a month old at most, because if she’s far enough along to get morning sickness then it already has a pinprick heartbeat. Kepler shakes his head and pushes the door open, looking both ways before stepping out into the corridor.

Getting to the Urania and leaving Rachel in the brig without getting caught is going to be hard. Convincing the crew he’s on their side and wants to help them out will be harder. And dealing with the earache Rachel’s going to give him when she wakes up with a splitting headache to discover that - hopefully - they’ve killed Pryce and Cutter and are headed back to Earth? That may be the hardest trial that’s yet to come his way.


End file.
